At Consumerist, consumer privacy and data security have been growing areas of coverage over the past few years. We regularly write about policies, corporate and government alike, that either threaten or help safeguard your privacy. We cover data breaches big and small, and investigate tips from you, our readers. We offer advice about good practices that can help protect you and your data, and try to give you a heads-up when a company changes something that might affect you. And when your kid’s doll is recording what you say and sending the information to a defense contractor — Consumerist is there.

But we’re excited to announce a new initiative that will allow us to do much, much more.

Consumerist is part of Consumer Reports, the 80-year-old nonprofit consumer organization, and today we are launching the first phase of a collaborative, open-source effort to create a new digital consumer-protection standard that safeguards consumers’ security and privacy.

At its core, the standard is a series of criteria that manufacturers, researchers and others can use to start to evaluate the privacy and security of different products and services. The launch of this first phase of the standard also represents a continued organizational commitment by Consumer Reports and Consumerist to produce and publish rigorous, data-driven, information and news about the privacy and security of the products and services you buy, your rights, and your data.

The digital standard project is open to everyone. Consumer Reports and its partners don’t own the standard—no one does. CR is releasing it in a public, shared document. And everyone from consumers to engineers to security researchers are invited to give feedback, add their own ideas, and make the standard better.

We encourage you to head over to Consumer Reports to read about the standard, its creation, and more — and if you’re ready to dive-in and contribute something — the full standard is available here.

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